


Queer Futurity is Becoming a Ghost After You Die and Convincing a Lesbian to Carry Out Your Unfinished Business [Meta]

by osteophage



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, queer futurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osteophage/pseuds/osteophage
Summary: Metacommentary applying the concept of queer futurity to the Machineries of Empire.
Relationships: Ajewen Cheris & Garach Jedao Shkan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Queer Futurity is Becoming a Ghost After You Die and Convincing a Lesbian to Carry Out Your Unfinished Business [Meta]

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the March Meta Matters Challenge and has been crossposted to [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1167789). Contains major spoilers for Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem.

A while back in February, I made [a joke about the plot of TMOE](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1076260), then [expanded a little on the thought](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1076486). For [one of the MMMC writing prompts](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1139467), I'm now revisiting that thought and expanding on it a lot more to explain 1) what I mean by queer futurity and 2) how it applies to becoming a ghost after you die and convincing a lesbian to carry out your unfinished business.

Note that this analysis is going to involve massive, massive spoilers. If you're curious about the books but would prefer to avoid spoilers, please check out [this other post](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1167547) instead.

### What is Queer Futurity?

I was first introduced to the term queer futurity through Queenie, who was writing in response to Lee Edelman's disavowal of the concept, initially in the format of jokes: 

[Queer futurity is eating your academic enemies to absorb their power.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/166778343821/aceadmiral-said-okay-but-do-it-in-japanese-i)[ Queer futurity is making sure that the next generation can live on after you.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/178652804336/liesonthefloordramatically-me-remembering-how)[ Queer futurity is a modular body part exchange program.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/177867511631/adventures-in-asexuality-cracksandcraters)[ Queer futurity is crawling into the ground and passing the torch to someone crawling out of the ground.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/177203034146/to-counteract-the-%E7%A9%A2%E3%82%8C-of-this-evening-i-offer)[ Queer futurity is tricking your friends into liking your queer futurity memes.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/176300021901/so-im-secretly-hoping-desperately-for-a-queer)[ Queer futurity is dedicating yourself to revenge so completely that you non-biologically spawn future generations solely to enact vengeance.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/167939563391/liesonthefloordramatically)[ Queer futurity is building a kinder world from the ashes of the apocalypse.](https://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/185398831306/hear-all-the-bombs-fade-away-a-playlist-by)

And so on.

The inspiration for these jokes comes from the book _No Future_ , in which Lee Edelman positions queerness in direct opposition to futurity. Futurity refers to perpetuation/continuation into the future, and reproductive futurism, specifically, is when that continuation is ensured by biological reproduction (i.e. making babies, having children). Since Edelman understands queerness primarily in terms of nonreproductive sex, he understands queerness in terms of turning away from the future and instead living in the now.

This position has been critiqued by other queer theorists, among them José Esteban Muñoz, who takes almost the complete opposite position: queerness as a "potentiality," something that "does not yet exist" and is "not yet here."

> Queerness is utopian, and there is something queer about the utopian. [...] To live inside straight time and ask for, desire, and imagine another time and place is to represent and perform a desire that is both utopian and queer. To participate in such an endeavor is not to imagine an isolated future for the individual but instead to participate in a hermeneutic that wishes to describe a collective futurity, a notion of futurity that functions as a historical materialist critique. [...] Ultimately, we must insist on a queer futurity because the present is so poisonous and insolvent.

\--José Esteban Muñoz, _Cruising Utopia_

Responding to Edelmen as well, Queenie takes a similar but slightly different approach, defining queer futurity as **"a way of imagining a future connected to our present that doesn’t rely on biological reproduction."**

> People often mistake me for an optimist, but I wouldn't say I am. I don't think the future is inherently a better, brighter place. I don't think the sun will come out tomorrow.
> 
> What I do think is that if tomorrow continues to be dark, the least I can do is make sure that whoever comes after me has a flashlight.
> 
> And this is where queer futurity comes in for me – being able to conceptualize a better future not for myself but for the people who come after me... For me, queer futurity is hope, not that things will get better, but that I can make them better for whoever comes next, that whatever I build (whether that's resources or community or just plain ol' relationships with other individuals) will live on beyond me.

\--[To build an unimaginable future (or, Queenie is way too jazzed about queer futurity)](https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/to-build-an-unimaginable-future-or-queenie-is-way-too-jazzed-about-queer-futurity/)

### Queer Futurity in the Machineries of Empire

There are at least four different angles for applying the concept of queer futurity to the Machineries of Empire: 1) the cultural & individual deviation from heteronormative reproductive futurism, 2) interpreting Jedao and Cheris as queer, 3) Jedao's non-biological "reproduction" through undeath, and 4) building a less violent world from the ashes of the old. Each of these angles considers the concept of futurity and queerness in a slightly different sense, but they all weave together and build on each other in a narrative exploration of queer futurity.

#### Biological Reproduction in the Hexarchate

TMOE's futuristic sci fi society operates differently from mine in a number of ways, including with regard to reproduction. According to the narration in _Raven Strategem_ , most people in the hexarchate are "crèche-born," which appears to refer to something like artificial reproduction, and the hexarchate's cultural notions of parenthood are entirely disconnected from blood relation. In fact, "non-custodial parent" is considered a paradox in the hexarchate's language.

Shuos Jedao was born before this became the norm, though, and he mentions that he never had any children -- "I saw to that medically and I didn't sleep with many womanforms to begin with." Genetically speaking, then, he did not reproduce. In the hexarcate's cultural-legal understanding, as well, he never had any children. This forfeits his familial and genetic connection to the future. More broadly, this also means Yoon Ha Lee is imagining a possible world where biological reproduction becomes thoroughly discoupled from family lineage and societal values.

#### The Queer Subjectivity of Jedao and Cheris

The above poses some implications for trying to read Jedao and Cheris as "queer." The hexarchate's technological advances and social norms have made the gender composition of a partnership a politically irrelevant consideration; sex and marriage between men or between women is treated as unremarkable.

With that said, if we're applying a real-world lens to them as a characters, then both characters could easily be classed as queer. In terms of dating and sex, Jedao shows a disproportionate prefrenece for men, and Cheris has a disproportionate pereference for women. In one interview Yoon Ha Lee even refers to Cheris as a lesbian.

Describing them that way means interpreting them in terms of the real-world cultural/political context, as opposted to the one depicted in-universe. I'm noting this not as a drawback, to be clear, just an acknowledgement -- because second to that, I'd also like to talk about reading the text in a more immersive sense, as well.

What I'm saying is that there's another, additional way that Jedao and Cheris might be interpreted as queer, if "queer" is taken as divergence from the norm: in their world, it's called "heresy." Heresy in the hexarchate refers to any deviation from the rules and rituals of the high calendar, the social order which literally powers some of their most powerful technology. Anyone can be declared a heretic for failing to adhere to it.

At the beginning of Ninefox Gambit, this is precisely what lands Cheris in enough trouble to end up working with Jedao. Initially, though, she thinks of herself as a loyal Kel soldier, despite some deeply hidden heretical sympathies. Over the course of the book, Jedao is able to manipulate those sympathies closer and closer to the surface and ultimately recruit her to his heretical cause.

#### Undeath as Queer Reproduction

When queer theorists discuss reproduction, unless otherwise specified, they're usually talking about biological reproduction in the sense of pregnancy and babies. As discussed above, the character of Jedao chose not to reproduce in that sense. Arguably, though, he does reproduce himself in a far more unnatural way: preserving his own existence after death.

This feat is accomplished through a sci fi technology called the black cradle, an immortality device, which Jedao sets his sights on in order to facilitate his other plans. In a flashback scene, when Jedao confesses to Sereset his intention to "tear the whole fucking structure down," Sereset tells him, "We're too big, Jedao. You couldn't do it in one lifetime and guarantee the results." Those words are what provoke his realization: _In one lifetime._ What he needs is more than one lifetime. And so he concocts a plan to attain exactly that, by manipulating the Kel into executing him and bringing him back as revenant.

Four hundred years later, Jedao is killed a second time, reducing him to carrion glass, but that isn't the end of the story.

> Jedao had tried to give her what he could. _Don't make my mistakes_ , he had said. A few words and a lifetime of memories.
> 
> He had wanted her to continue the game for him. Or perhaps she was supposed to decide whether the game was worth playing at all. [...]
> 
> If she abandoned the splinters, Jedao would be truly dead, and his terrible treasonous war with him. If she devoured the last of them, she could carry on the fight, but the person doing so might not be Kel Cheris.

Despite grave misgivings, Cheris chooses to consume the glass, recover his memories, and continue the game, becoming someone who is neither exclusively Cheris or nor entirely Jedao.

This is not reproduction in the conventional sense. What becomes of them is not in any way parallel to the relation between husband and wife or father and child, but instead, a uniquely fantastical relationship of heretic and heretic, traitor and traitor -- a recruitment, a conversion.

#### Creating Something Solid From the Ashes

Preserving himself is, for Jedao, only a means to an ends in order to change the whole of society. In other stories, this might be as simple as killing or overthrowing the monarch, but in this series the implications are a little more far-reaching than that. As the narration notes from Jedao's POV: "The hard part wasn't getting rid of the heptarchs. It was creating a functioning, stable, sane society from the heptarchate's ashes."

This becomes the core driving objective in Raven Strategem: Cheris-Jedao needs to come up with an alternative system and recruit allies by convincing them that another world is possible. This persuasion process unfolds over the course of the book, mainly with Kel Khiruev, who later helps her persuade others in turn.

What makes this such a hard sell isn't really the goal itself. The hexarchate is an extremely violent place to live, even for some of its most loyal citizens... to say nothing of the disloyal citizens, who are ritually tortured to death. Consequently there are many closet idealists, like Khiruev and Brezan, who secretly despise the hexarchs. The problem is that real change feels impossible because the rebellions are always defeated: "As the heretics proved, over and over, rebelling was easy. The coalescence of a viable successor government was another matter." For this reason, Khiruev and many others are reluctant to openly defy the hexarchate.

Hope is not a strategy -- but a strategy can create hope. In order to make her rebellion successful, Cheris-Jedao needs to do a lot more than criticize the existing system or wax poetic about ideals. As she tells Khiruev, "People won't fight their own government unless they think they have a way to win. We're going to provide them with a way to win." This necessarily means looking to the future and anticipating what it will take for a new system to sustain itself.

And so she does. She creates the actual, logistical conditions for a rebellion to survive, for an alternative to stick, for her to make a difference that ripples out into the future.

#### So Like I Said

Cheris and Jedao, as characters, are immensely wrapped up in playing the long game. Jedao's mission to destroy the hexarchate involves a commitment to replacing it with something else that can endure. When Serest warns him that this can't be accomplished in a single lifetime, Jedao resolves to immortalize himself. Centuries down the line, when he's killed for the second time, Cheris recovers his memories and takes up his cause -- not just undermining the hexarchate, but devising something to replace it with, too: a different way of life, a different calendar, one that doesn't demand ritual torture and human sacrifice. All of this entails imagining unprecedented possibilities and pursuing continuities between the present and the future, trying to make something last, without regard to conventional biological reproduction. 

Or in other words: becoming a ghost after you die and convincing a lesbian to carry out your unfinished business is queer futurity.


End file.
